PurpleCrap: No Peak, No Plot, No Meaning

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++Good, watch the pendulum go!

One foine Tuesday, June 13,]-[ of clan Mauvecloud wrote:

"I turned, thinking that I heard the voice I had longed to hear for years. Somehow, the clap on the shoulder never came - living on is the greatest punishment."
- The Book of Undead Persons (a.k.a. Quotes for Your Next Emo Gay Novel), Chapter VII

Euphoria - euphoria. I am such a suspicious bastard I have to continuously interrogate myself whenever I feel even slightly happy. (The lowest point of the arc being the default state for ol' hentai H.) What are the reasons? What are the forces that triggered the upward swing? A good night's sleep, a good bowl of artificial udon, a good book, an interesting arc in ROTK (or 3K, depending on Your Mileage), a cute 14-year old PRC boy who spoke Chinese to me for the first time (he did! he said 再見 instead the usual 'bye).

And so, neglecting the laws stated here regarding LJ-cuts, here are my cuts. (For my pedestrian self, my opinion is the very copy of the view expressed in the first comment. Where others are concerned, there is always the Friends Filter.)

Random thoughts on Eric Blair's Showa 59 and Funny Farm
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are easily entwined in a person's mind - both penned by the same author and for the same purpose of agitating against totalitarianism of any form. It is possible to find equivalents of the characters in one book in the other. Parsons, sweaty and unquestioning diligence personified, is Boxer. Julia, a rebel from the waist down (does that mean she votes with her feet? =P), is a Mollie who has been unable to escape from the Farm. Winston Smith is one of the four dissenting porkers. Emmanuel Goldstein is Snowball; Big Brother is a long-dead Napoleon. O'Brien is possibly Squealer, but better.

My favorite character is O'Brien, of course, since people's favorite characters are always one of these two:
(1) characters you see your present self in (in this case, Mollie masquerading as Muriel, and vice versa); or
(2) characters you aspire to (O'Brien).

The awe-inspiring ability: To subsume the minds of the rebels, to have a profound understanding of how they think, profound to the point of being able to feel what they feel, and thus, empathize with them without losing sight of the original intent of oppressing them. In other words, to think like the enemy, to swim but not let yourself drown in their sympathies - a thrilling exercise of control - maybe like walking along a narrow parapet on the top of a high-rise on a cold and windy night. Perhaps this trick is nothing to a Jesuit of the old school.

The satisfaction: The misery written all over the face of the n00b rebel as he realizes the above. That you have contemplated the rebellion as he had, that you do understand, and more, how 'bad' the oppressors are, but that, in the end, you choose to be one of the oppressors anyway. As for 'bad', I don't mind being the 3,921,889-th person on the 'Net to say that it's just a name for one side of the game.

And then there's the Chestnut Tree song.

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree

It makes me sad (and the pendulum hesitates as I contemplate the verse). I wonder if that is a sign of one's love for BB oppression and oppressing. Absolute power is the power strong enough not to directly sever human affection, but to make one human throw away that affection on his own accord. The idea of the Party replacing the Hive does not quite appeal to me though - genetic continuity may or may not contradict ideological continuity, but at least one does not need the Department of Truth to change (no, no, 'rectify' is the word) one's DNA sequence.

And finally, rereading those books makes me think again on the nature of (childhood) memories. According to one intelligent manga reader, Urasawa Naoki's 20th Century is an attempt to demonstrate the fluid nature of such memories. According to my bellyfeel, the nature of memories is as mutable as the Mississippi herself - whenever the need arises for a new character or another fresh volume Urasawa simply adds the necessary ingredient to the memories of the pertinent character(s). In other jargons, using default, and seemingly infinite amount of, memory holes, one can indefinitely prolong a formerly good, but dying manga.

But I digress. Today it seems funny to me that I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four in my diapers but did not get Pratchett/Gaiman's reference in the ending of Good Omens which I read a few years ago until I reread O'Brien's triumphant diatribe last week, but I suppose this is a thing old-timers have to bear with. Memories play tricks.

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再見 vs. 'Bye
I do not speak Mandarin with the Original Jacobs - mainlanders a.k.a. PRC Chinese and Taiwanese. As for the SARs, with HongKies one easily converses in street Cantonese, which is ironic considering that my spoken Mandarin is way better than my Cantonese, street, standard or Four-District. And more ironies: I have no problem yakking away in Mandarin with any Malaysian or Singaporean of the Chinese descent if the other person has the misfortune to not speak the lingua franca of the Bengs (Hokkien). Being self-obsessed and an anal~~ytic~~ person, I soon discovered the reason why: The key lies in perceived inferiority. My ++Good ears perceive the difference in accents with no difficulty at all, and they foolishly claim: Accents other than Beijing accent (especially Taiwanese and the aping Singaporean variant) are not worth getting up the bed for.

Therefore, with the Original Jacobs I maintain the propaganda that I do not speak Mandarin, only letting slips the occasional 你好 or 氣死人啦, especially during mostly-English conversations with the colleague who shares the office room. And so I was really gratified the other evening when I met her and son walking to the uni on my way home, for at the end of our brief chat (it was too cold for comfort out there this time of the year), he made his sole contribution to the conversation: 再見. Being self-obsessed and an anal~~ytic~~ person, I translate it as: So long, you old hag and how dare you make me shiver for 5 minutes while you spout nonsense with my mother.

Why J-Rock/Visual Kei idols
mjj's comment on cultural appropriation (people: "Cultural appropriation!" me: "One wrong bad, Two wrongs better?") somehow reminds me of a half-fried theory I used to have on the popularity of J-Rock idols (not the 5 o'clock shady type ala Kuroyume, but those of the pretty bois variety) among girls of various origins. I don't recall having posted this before, so I'll chance it.

3) For some reason, certain non-aZn males specialize in wanting to bone aZn girls.
2) Lots of white and aZn females alike want to bone J-Rock idols.
1) J-Rock idols (for three paramount examples see http://mauvecloud.livejournal.com/98513.html, warning big pictures) are aZn bois who want to be white women.
Conclusion: The Hivemind is a white woman, and she has all the punchlines.

// mauve signed off @ 6:28 PM

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